and indeed to boast of it.
Can we think seriously of the importance of this subject without being
horrified at conduct so extravagant?

This resting in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who pass their life
in it must be made to feel its extravagance and stupidity, by having it
shown to them, so that they may be confounded by the sight of their folly.
For this is how men reason, when they choose to live in such ignorance of
what they are and without seeking enlightenment. "I know not," they say...

196. Men lack heart; they would not make a friend of it.

197. To be insensible to the extent of despising interesting things, and to
become insensible to the point which interests us most.

198. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great
things, indicates a strange inversion.

199. Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death,
where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who
remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn,
looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the
condition of men.

200. A man in a dungeon, ignorant whether his sentence be pronounced and
having only one hour to learn it, but this hour enough, if he knew that it
is pronounced, to obtain its repeal, would act unnaturally in spending that
hour, not in ascertaining his sentence, but in playing p